Many cheered when Interior Secretary Sally Jewell announced earlier this month that she would “pause” new federal coal leases by ordering the department to consider how to better disclose and account for the environmental and climate damage that coal inflicts.

This is a guest blog post by Alan Heald and Mary Gilkison. Alan and Mary are recreationists from the Denver area and members of the Quiet Use Coalition who frequently visit and own property within the Pike-San Isabel National Forest.

In less than a month, diplomats and negotiators from the United States and the rest of the world will start work in Paris on an agreement to limit the world’s carbon pollution, the leading cause of climate change.

The U.S. delegation will have the wind at its back, and some leverage to seek a strong international framework for action, following the president’s nixing of the Keystone XL pipeline project last Friday.

Update, June 4, 2015: Over 200,000 people flooded the U.S. Forest Service with comments over the last month calling for the agency to reject a plan for roads and infrastructure that would enable construction of a mega-development on Grand Canyon’s doorstep.

Earthjustice attorney Ted Zukoski responds to a New York Times article about the effects of recreation on wolverines in Wyoming. The Letter to the Editor was first published in the NYT Sunday Review on February 21.

Climate pollution threatens our children's health, cherished wildlife and forests, agriculture and our coastlines. Its impacts only get worse, and more costly, the longer we continue to make decisions for the future that commit us to more carbon pollution.

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